


Harlow & His Monkeys

by terranautvoyager



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Communication, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Minor Injuries, Mutual Pining, S3 & S4 are ignored, Sharing a Bed, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:46:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26519986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terranautvoyager/pseuds/terranautvoyager
Summary: There were many ways, countless moments and ample opportunities for the multi-headed hydra, which was sentimentality, to rear its ugly head in the space between Sherlock and John’s undefined relationship. It was only a matter of time before Sherlock was able to name this previously indefinable emotion. Love.The five times Sherlock might have fallen in love with John and the one time John realised.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Kudos: 30





	Harlow & His Monkeys

_“So far as love or affection is concerned, psychologists have failed in their mission. The little we know about love does not transcend simple observation, and the little we write about it has been written better by poets and novelists.”_ _  
__― Harry Harlow_

_~_

There were many ways, countless moments and ample opportunities for the multi-headed hydra, which was sentimentality, to rear its ugly head in the space between Sherlock and John’s undefined relationship. It was only a matter of time before Sherlock was able to name this previously indefinable emotion. Love. 

When it came to falling in love, Sherlock Holmes cared less about the ‘how’ and more about the ‘when’. He understood basic neurochemistry. It was a simple reaction of hormones, neurons, and receptors. He had thought himself to be above such base human drives. Regrettably, his emotions always were his weakness.

Despite his denials, he knew the basic laws of human survival applied to him. Yes, he could go for days without sleeping but nevertheless he slept. In John’s words, he could go for a ‘medically miraculous’ time without food, yet still, he ate. He had gone more than thirty years of his life believing he could survive without love and yet still- it appeared, he loved. The only question was when?

There had been a time when an offer to make tea for John had stemmed from his desire to get something in return or from Mrs. Hudson’s reminders of ‘ _common courtesy’_. However, now he offered to make John tea because he knew the other man enjoyed it. When had the switch occurred? When had he become capable of creating a modus operandi lacking in ulterior motives? There were several moments that could have caused the switch. Sherlock would have to examine them all.

**___________I___________**

**To Heal**

Sherlock had become acquainted with the smell of blood from a young age. He recalled walking several miles from his parent’s country house to the adjacent farmland. One of the farm boys in his early twenties had taken a shine to the odd little seven-year-old who marched across the marshes at the crack of dawn wearing his brother’s too-large gumboots, asking questions people twice his senior would struggle to answer.

‘Death,’ The farm boy had said one morning, was ‘just a part of life’. Even at seven, Sherlock had realised the phrase was the type of thing ordinary people said when they were trying to be profound. To him, it just sounded like someone stating the obvious. People were born, people died. It was the muddled, mess of middle that was interesting.

It wasn’t the farm boy’s job to kill the animals. When they were ready they would be sold to an abattoir and the farm boy’s calloused hands would remain clean enough for him to have deniability about raising the beasts for the slaughter. However, this wasn’t always the case.

One morning Sherlock had tagged along with the boy trying to find a cow, which had gone missing during a particularly nasty storm. They had found the creature half-buried in the mud, with a leg broken in three places. The chances of it living were slim enough to warrant what the boy had called a ‘mercy killing’. Perhaps another seven-year-old with less keen eyes would think these words were a juxtaposition or that the act was cruel. However, Sherlock had already heard such things from both his mother and father. You had to be cruel to be kind. It was one of the only pillars of parenting they had both agreed upon.

The farm boy had ordered Sherlock to return home with his keen eyes and oversized gumboots but the child insisted on staying. For his fourth birthday, his brother Mycroft had given him a pocket watch, which Sherlock had spent the better part of a day disassembling and reassembling. He took pieces out to see which were necessary and which could be removed while still having a fully functioning watch. The dead animal had sparked his curiosity in the same way. He wanted to see what made it tick, how the muscles and tendons made the creature move, how the lungs would swell and expand to provide the thing with air. Sherlock told as much to the farm boy who had called him a freak but let him stay.

Others in Sherlock’s life would point to this moment as a precursor to what they deemed his ‘ _psychopathy’_ or ‘ _sociopathy’_ \- depending upon who you asked. His mother argued the former, his father, the latter. When all was said and done, the diagnosis would be the same. Anti-social personality disorder. Others would come to use these terms when referring to him, obviously not understanding the diagnosis was one and the same. Those who were quick to point fingers often didn’t know what they were talking about. _Normal_ people loved to point fingers.

The fascination wasn’t in the killing. Hence his lack of a concrete diagnosis despite the behest of both his parents. His fascination with death relied on what it could tell him about life. He had never believed in anything cosmic or godly but he never felt the need to quicken the pace of death. It wasn’t something he felt capable of doing to anyone or anything besides himself. Later Sherlock would learn this was untrue, he could kill but there was no joy in it, no fascination. There was a fascination in the function.

~

Sherlock had smelled the blood before he saw it, the acrid, sweet stench of iron. He placed a hand on his temple, unsurprised when he felt it sticky with blood. 

“You alright?” John asked at his elbow.

The two had been chasing down a man suspected of killing four middle-aged women in increasingly intriguing manners. The first had been found dressed as a cabaret act, her face painted like a china doll, her body swinging from the stage ropes in a small North London theatre. The second had been placed to fit amongst the wax figures in the London Dudgeon doing her best impression of Vlad the Impaler, fit with a surprisingly accurate historical garment. The third and fourth were found in a similar macabre manner involving a gaudy vignette resembling a scene from Sweeny Todd on Fleet Street. They had finally tracked the killer down to his small costume shop on an offshoot of Oxford Street. Like many cases, it ended in a chase. However, the serrated, metal pipe had been a surprising addition.

Sherlock had been caught off guard. The man had stopped running, spun on his heels, and landed one quick blow to his temple. It hadn’t been enough to render Sherlock unconscious but it had done more than enough to slow him down. He had doubled over in shock. The pain would come later. Sherlock predicted the blow to the stomach which followed but allowed it to happen, letting the man think he had the upper hand before snatching the pipe from his grasp. Sherlock landed a swift blow to the back of the man’s knees suppressing a smirk as the assailant’s legs folded beneath him.

By this time, John had caught up to them and in an instant, he was once again a soldier. He captured the man’s hands, locked his head in place, and forced him face-first into the pavement. Sherlock noted John adding more pressure than he would deem necessary but thought nothing more of it. The rest of the scene unfolded as expected, Scotland Yard eventually caught up and arrested the man before leaving Sherlock and John to their own devices. John’s hands found their way to the side of Sherlock’s head, briefly getting side-tracked in his hair before coming to the back of Sherlock’s neck. It was a gesture Sherlock identified as a blood sweep, common military protocol. John Watson, ever the army doctor.

“You’ll need stitches for that,” John stated pragmatically. Sherlock had spun on his heels and flagged down a taxi, having anticipated this response.

“I don’t,” He replied stubbornly. 

“You do,” John’s voice was stern. His hand tugged on the back of Sherlock’s jacket, forcing the taller man to stop.

“I’d rather not.” Sherlock only visited hospitals when he wasn’t the object of scrutiny. John said nothing more. His gaze remained disapproving, his grasp steady. Every tense nerve in the smaller man’s body told Sherlock this was not an argument he would win.

“You can do it at home.” Compromise. Drab magazine articles were always stating the importance of compromise in relationships. He supposed that was what he was meant to do in this situation. The resigned sagging of John’s shoulders told Sherlock not all magazine articles were useless.

“Fine.” John compromised.

~

The benchtop beneath Sherlock was cold but John’s hands were warm. The hold John had on Sherlock’s face was firm and steadfast as he cleaned the gash on Sherlock’s forehead. The pain was present but manageable. Sherlock had been through much worse. The addict in him proposed the pain could be eradicated entirely with a needle and spoon.

Before John, that was how Sherlock would have fixed it. It was, as he had been informed, a ‘short term fix’. Sherlock was living proof you could get through life fixing bullet holes with Band-Aids. Ignoring his twenties, when he had experienced several nasty bouts of sepsis in quick succession which had left him in A&E for over a month. Maybe, Sherlock conceded, John was good for him.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” John spoke, examining the gash.

“If it were anyone else I would stick it together with superglue and call it a day. But you're a bit of a health and safety hazard.” Sherlock shot John a pointed look but nodded, indicating for him to continue.

The morning before in one of his characteristic fits of frustrated petulance, Sherlock had knocked his favourite mug from the kitchen bench, shattering it. He had been trying to solve a case. After emerging from his mind palace several hours later with a clue regarding the location of the suspect he had looked over to find his favourite mug held together with superglue, placed with such precision the cup was still able to hold tea. Sherlock pretended not to notice.

Upon remembering the mug, Sherlock had an oddly comforting thought. Skulls and mugs could be fixed in the same way, with John’s hands. They were the same hands that were now tinkering away at the gash on his head.

“I want to see what you’re doing,” Sherlock states, watching as John’s screwed up his nose feigning disgust.

Sherlock expected John to note the gruesomeness of the injury and the morbidity of wanting to see it. He was already formulating a counterargument. Though he was not sure where it would begin he knew it would end with,

‘Corpses John, I work with corpses.’ Dramatic and factually accurate.

John surprised him.

“It’s a bit boring by your standards.”

While John spoke the thumb of his right hand traced over Sherlock’s hairline, pushing a wayward curl behind his ear to get a better view of the injury. It was both intimate and practical. John’s eyes never left the gash, but his hand did linger. He then began stitching. To Sherlock’s surprise, he hardly noticed. One of the many ointments John had slathered on the wound had likely been a localised numbing agent. He could feel a small pulling at his head but it wasn’t painful.

“Show me anyway,” Sherlock pushed.

John groaned but complied, grabbing a hand mirror from the cabinet beneath the sink and handing it to Sherlock. The two spent a moment shifting around each other. The quiet dance ended with Sherlock on the floor and John hunched over on the rim of the bathtub, the mirror propped up beside him.

“Happy?” John asked as he continued stitching.

The action was completely muscle memory. John’s eyes met Sherlock’s as he continued to sew his skin together. Sherlock imagined John replicating this precision during the blackest of nights in an Afghanistan desert. Sherlock had wondered if John would have met his eyes if the two men had been strangers or comrades in arms.

“I’m satisfied,” Sherlock remarked keeping his voice devoid of the softer emotions his mind had been occupied with. 

“How many times have you done this?” Sherlock asked examining John’s steady hands in the mirror. 

“Too many to count.”

“In Afghanistan?” Sherlock’s not the type to discuss personal matters. It came as a surprise to no one, least of all John that they hadn’t talked about his time in the war or for that matter, his life before Sherlock.

“And in London- all over the place really. Last week in the clinic I had to do the same thing to a five-year-old who hit their head on the side of a coffee table. He was better at staying still.” Sherlock arched a brow in indignation but otherwise ignored the jab.

“When did you first learn how to suture?” John had laughed dryly.

“Can’t you deduce that?” Sherlock rolled his eyes his chest heaving as he inhaled. With a knowing look, John braced himself. Sherlock either spoke with a word or a paragraph. John was prepared for the latter.

“I know it was before you went to medical school. You have the precision of a doctor but your methods are that of a self-trained man. Your first instinct was to go for a suture which was simple to do but also not the most practical. It took a moment for your medical training to kick in and then you began to do a more complicated but sturdier and more practical stitch. Which tells me you likely learnt the process before medical school.”

John gave Sherlock the same awestruck look he always had when the taller of the two decided to indulge him by explaining his deductive reasoning. 

“Right. Yes. Brilliant,” John breathed before his face composed itself and the look of a man deep in concentration came over him. He had considered his next words carefully.

“When my mum died- um, right.” John cleared his throat, his eyes moving from Sherlock’s back to the wound. 

People chastised Sherlock for ignoring the softer emotions but John was just as bad though he was better at interpreting the emotions of others. He was a mirror, reflecting other people’s sentiments to avoid having his own seen. The two made quite the pair.

“You know Harry’s an alcoholic,” John stated, speaking in stunted soliloquies.

“So was my father. After mum died he just-” John let out another puff of breath finishing the stitch with a knot and leaning back examining a stain on the ceiling as if the spot held an answer. Sherlock suddenly hated his position on the floor, feeling like the space between himself and John was a mile. He felt small.

“Anyway. The family fell to bits all at once. Someone had to pick up the pieces.”

Sherlock knew he should do something. To his deep frustration, he couldn’t work out what. Reciprocal emotional vulnerability seemed to be the best course of action. Sherlock was good at playing parts. He was good at observing people, knowing what needed to be done to present as normal, and fabricating a lie to suit. He wasn’t good at being himself and being vulnerable.

“I wouldn’t know what that’s like. My family was never together enough to fall apart.” It was a fact and Sherlock stated it as such but the little glimmer of surprise in John’s eyes told him he might not be as horrible at sharing as he had first assumed.

“Yes, well. I never could picture you and Mycroft sitting around a Sunday roast, talking about the weather.” Sherlock screwed up his nose and John laughed, a tension in his shoulders lifting.

John then stood, and retrieved a pair of scissors from the first aid kit, cutting the ragged end of the stitch. He turned Sherlock’s face to examine his handiwork.

“Anyway, one night Harry sliced up her leg trying to sneak out. She jumped out of her window and landed on the bin. It would have been funny if there wasn’t so much blood. Dad was passed out so Harry’s girlfriend Kate and I carried her back into the house. Kate was training to be a vet and she showed me how to do a couple of basic stitches. It came in handy. Dad was always falling down the steps or tripping through the sliding glass door to the back garden.” 

Sherlock noted a slight tremor in John’s hands. If he wasn’t able to feel the slight tremble he would have deemed it a trick of the light. John Watson was an unwavering soldier when facing danger but at that moment, he reminded Sherlock of the man he had first met. It was the John Watson who believed himself to be a man injured to the point of breaking, a shattered mug irreparably damaged.

“Right,” John had sighed when Sherlock hadn’t spoken thinking he had dismissed the story as sentiment. Sherlock had been too focused on John’s hands to realise he had expected a response.

“So, explain to me again how you figured out it was the costume maker. It had something to do with the fabric, didn’t it?” John deflected, moving to a topic he had known would spark Sherlock’s interest and recapture his attention.

On many occasions, Sherlock had chastised John for the belief that the consulting detective could read his mind but in this instance, Sherlock had enough data to take an educated guess.

“You’re an idiot,” He spoke plainly feeling John give him a sharp look.

“Have you ever thought with that big brain of yours that it’s not smart to insult your doctor? I could always start ignoring the Hippocratic oath.”

“I don’t think you’re boring,” Sherlock stated, pulling his face from John’s grip stilling his hand. Sherlock’s eyes met John’s for a moment before his gaze shifted to the corner of the room. 

“Surely you’ve realised that.”

For a long moment, John didn’t speak. He dropped his hand and stood up, looking down at Sherlock. It was then that Sherlock received one of John’s rare looks. In the time the two had known one another he had only seen John give that look a handful of times, always directed at him.

Sherlock had little knowledge of astronomy but he knew once every few years people on the telly would faun over the crossing of the sun and the moon. He hadn’t understood the fuss but each time he received one of John’s rare looks he came a little closer to comprehension. They were rare, awe-inspiring, and beautiful.

“I’m not the only idiot,” John countered.

“I like having you around, you keep me on my toes you absolute lunatic.”

Sherlock hid a smile that threatened to twitch across his lips by ducking his head and clambering to his feet.

“It wasn’t the fabric that gave him away, it was the type of thread he used. The fabric was deep marron, the stitches were forest green. The man was colour blind. How many colour-blind costume designers do you think there are in London?” When faced with emotional topics Sherlock could always deflect by referring to a case and after all, John had been the one to ask.

“Right. How could I have missed that?” John spoke in a tone that dripped with sarcasm but his face, still smiling broadly, betrayed his voice.

John swung open the bathroom door and ushered Sherlock into the hallway.

“Explain the rest to me over dinner. I was thinking of phoning the Thai place down the street.”

Sherlock hummed in agreeance, happy to fall back into their comfortable post-case patterns of eating takeout in their respective chairs and talking about the case. However, on that night the eclipsing smile never left John’s face and Sherlock had fumbled over his explanations because of it.

As the night wore on John had stood to go to bed. As he passed Sherlock’s chair he gave the man’s knee a small squeeze.

“Night,” John breathed and then was gone.

Sherlock had curled into his armchair and pressed his fingers to the hallow of his own wrist. As he had suspected, his pulse was elevated.


End file.
